Besides its new Web site and Internet access, the Yorba Linda Public Library also offers a number of special collections, special programs and a popular summer reading program.

Those programs would probably not exist without the help of some friends—more than 600 of them, said Library Director Carol Ann Tassios.

The Friends of the Yorba Linda Library is expected to raise about $50,000 this year to benefit the library and its patrons.

The group's fund-raising efforts pay for most of the special programs held throughout the year, the library's summer program. The group has paid for all the library's CD-ROMs, bought new computers for the adult and children's departments, and funded other items not normally budgeted for by the library, said Tassios.

“Our focus is to support the library, to increase community awareness in the library and library resources,” said Dick Bevers, president of the friends. “Every year the library prepares a wish list of things the library would like us to support and we try to do as many as we can.”

The primary source of the friends' funding is a small, but well-stocked, used book store on the first floor of the library building. Last year The Book Corner raised $36,000.

A few years ago, Tassios said, the friends provided the 10 computers that are now being used for the Internet at a cost of more than $40,000. The group maintains the library's annual subscription to the CD-Rom collection that runs $26,000.

Also helping the library offer what it does is Yorba Linda's growing population that brings the library a budget that can keep up with expenses.

The library receives $1.9 million annually from the city's property taxes, allowing it to have the largest book budget in the area for a library of its size.